Some scientists have found a tremendous amount of water locked within the
earth's mantle, mainly in the form of oxygen/hydrogen atoms bound to another
set of elements that become freed (if I'm reading this right) through certain
geological processes.

As such, they feel there are oceans worth of water trapped under the crust.

What isn't suggested by the artcle, but might be interesting none-the-less,
is what this might mean for other planets, like Mars. I wonder if we might
find water trapped in Mars' mantle... and if it could be used to bootstrap
the return of a martian atmosphere capable of sustaining life as we know it.

Man, the things you'd have to do to Mars to make that work, though. Have
to find a way to get the core heated and spinning, to generate enough magnetism
to keep the atmosphere from being blown away by the sun's forces.

Actually, with the surface gravity of Mars being only 38% that of Earth,
or roughly 3.7 m/sec^2 compared to Earth's 9.8 m/sec^2, I would suspect that
there is a bit more to "keeping" an atmosphere on Mars than merely "creating"
a planetary magnetic field and/or an ionosphere.

I am by no means an expert in that particular area of planetary physics but
it just seems so much **easier** for atmospheric molecules to escape into
space from a planet with gravity as weak as Mars.

To me, at least, there seems to be a lot more to terraforming Mars than just
"pumping up" an atmosphere.

But if we did something that would mean *MAN* ruined Mars... just like he

ruined life on earth.

Oh noes! Teh global warming on MARS!!!!1

Anyway fleeb, you misread the article. It didn't say there was an ocean
trapped under the earth's crust. It said that *Billy* Ocean was trapped under
the earth's crust. He got into big trouble for localizing the lyrics to his
songs and the world governments unanimously agreed that he presented enough
danger to justify sequestering him deep inside the planet.

This idiot isn't worthy of being the leader of *any* church. He's supposed
to be a disciple of Jesus, not a disciple of Al Gore. And he's got no business
being a cheerleader for communist Cuba either.

I hereby fire Pope Frank and appoint myself as the new leader of the catholic
church. My first order of business is to raze the Vatican and place a geological
observation site there, where raw climate data will be published directly
to the whole world without getting "corrected" by the IPCC.